The Caretaker
by Ceniza Quill
Summary: Penny for your thoughts...'


Author's Note; This is a fantastically long rant written in the pitch black of three in the morning. To give extra dimension to...stuff that needed more of those dimension thingies, I stuck in the thoughts and comments of random people along the way. It's an experiment I'd like opinions on, so if they are awful because (a) they don't fit (b) I didn't write them properly or (c) they just don't make any sense whatsoever (I do that a lot) feel free to smack me on the head with the metaphorical and mythical 'Club of Constructive Criticism.'  
  
Disclaimer; Dick Wolf owns the characters. I own the caretaker, even though I really don't like him. Oh, and I robbed an idea from Arthur Conan Doyle, it is very hard to spot though. I'm only mentioning it out of respect.  
  
The Caretaker  
  
This was the part that nobody knew about.  
  
This was the part where he sat at home holding an empty coffee cup and strained himself, teeth clenched and eyes misting over as they drowned out of focus. This was the part where Detective Robert Goren surrendered unwillingly. He was fighting against the immense weight of his own ability. Walking down the flight of stairs of his apartment – 72 steps, counted almost obsessively every time – anybody he met was stripped of pretensions by his eyes. He knew they reacted to him differently than as they acted towards other strangers. And that was undeniable. He was a stranger. He was that policeman from the apartment upstairs. They saw an imposing figure, over six feet tall, but neatly and stylishly dressed. He flashed them a nervous sideways smile and politely stepped out of the way. They were often amazed at how deftly and assertively he moved despite his blatant timidity – if there was such a thing.  
  
Jennifer, second floor, avoided him like the bubonic plague. She was not granted a far-reaching intelligence, nor were her statements frequently insightful, but her honest representation of 'that man' coaxed smiles of acknowledgement and recognition from her neighbours. 'That man – That Goren guy. Once I was walking back to my apartment from the grocery store with my brown paper bag tucked in under my arm 'cos I was afraid to break a bottle of wine I'd bought to seduce the guy I was dating. He knew! He stripped me down with those eyes and I felt guilty! Betchya he knew the bloody sell-by-date of the tin of peas just by studying the look on my face. He's no ordinary cop. I don't think he's quite right in the head, if you get me? He sees too much.'  
  
That had always been his trouble. Aptly exposed by the twenty four year old, called Sooty by her smoking companions – he sees too much.  
  
Mannerly but unsettling was the general verdict of the inhabitants of his apartment block who bonded over their grudging acknowledgment of each others existence once a month at their meetings. 'That man' rarely attended. Actually, he never attended. Once he had stood in the doorway conscientiously waiting until the speaker had finished and then mumbled humbly about a problem with the heating. And then quietly disappeared again.  
  
This was the part where the strength he had to fight so hard to muster was consumed. He heard the knock on his door. He put down the coffee-cup and breathed deeply. Sleep had eluded him three nights in a row. Alex was concerned. Studying his paler-than-usual face, her own impassive and expressionless. She had regarded him as somebody that was lying to her and that had made him realize that a lump was forming in his throat. He noticed her invisible concern and was even more touched as he realized she knew he knew. These infrequent duels of mutual awareness brought them closer together than any passing officer would suspect, seeing them slouched and eyeing each other.  
  
His thoughts wandered ruthlessly and he clawed them into focus.  
  
The Door.  
  
Jennifer from the second floor stood and, clutching her dressing-gown closed, began to speak rapidly about the men downstairs hurling bottles and shouting. Should they (the collective of the building's inhabitants) call the police?  
  
Detective Robert Goren – in jeans and a long sleeved brown shirt, top two buttons unfastened – felt for his gun on the hall table and nodded to Jennifer, 'Call the police'. He didn't recognize his own voice. It was too rough and too slow. The girl fled to a nearby door and initiated a frantic whispered conversation with the anonymous young man inside. Almost casually, he strode down the corridor with unseen eyeballs glued to peep-holes in every door.  
  
'That man' had a gun and Steve Cross - retired police officer and a knowledgeable old fellow who rarely expressed an opinion - parted his lips for the first time regarding Goren as he patted his wife Margot reassuringly on the arm.  
  
'From what I've heard our lads say about him', (his four sons fell, inevitably, to a profession the Cross family excelled at), 'This Goren is a smart man. Don't you worry now Margot he's a fine man, weird, but a good guy. After all he's partnered with Eames' daughter Alex'.  
  
Steve's soft drawl soothed his wife who was anxiously peering over the balcony. Everyone moved from the eastern side of the building to the western. It was a small apartment block and the balconies offered a vantage point from which they could spy on their one-manned assault on 'those hooligans' as Cathy Burns, an elderly pensioner described them.  
  
Alex looked up from the dishes she was stacking away neatly, past her friend's children who were playing on the carpet. Flicking her hair and pursing her lips in annoyance she waited for Sandra, who had been closest to the phone when it rang, was listening to the voice at the other end of the line.  
  
She held out the receiver and shrugged, 'it's some guy from work, something about your partner'. Alex smiled but she almost ran to the telephone. Goren had not looked well the last time she had seen him. On one hand Goren was the kind of guy that turned up to work on his day off to rant incomprehensively, throw a full cup of somebody else's coffee at the wall, point at it, study it intently with his head tilted sideways like a child and then run out again and argue with Carver for a warrant because he had solved a murder. Then again, he was also the kind of guy who sat alone at home staring into space because he had read all of the books lining the walls and because he couldn't bring himself to turn on the television. He was the kind of guy that made her worry although she would never admit it.  
  
'Detective Eames?'  
  
'Yes?'  
  
'I'm officer Robson. We got a call in from your partner's apartment block about a fight. There are two cars on their way there. We just thought you'd like to know.'  
  
Alex thought that this notification was a little unorthodox.  
  
'Why call me? Did they mention Detective Goren?'  
  
'That's the thing Detective. They said he had gone to sort it out.'  
  
'Thank you' Alex hung up. Bobby shouldn't have done that. She grabbed her coat off the back of a chair and Sandra watched open- mouthed as she rushed out of the apartment. Alex realized as she emerged onto the almost empty street that to everyone else what she was currently doing was unnatural. They didn't understand that Bobby was a 24 hour responsibility sometimes and that she had no compunction whatsoever about finding him. It never once crossed her mind to ignore the phone-call nor did she turn the key in the ignition with extra force fuelled by contempt, resignation or exasperation.  
  
This was the part that nobody knew about.  
  
This was the part where Alex Eames made her way to her partner in a manner nobody else understood except Goren. This was the part where she became more than a detective with the Major Crimes Squad, she was Goren's partner. The only person to fit into his pattern of solving crimes. She could take his steady weirdness for granted and understand that no matter how awfully ill he looked when he left his guard down, no matter how much psychologically exhausting pursuits and mind games he executed, he was always 'fine'. He could take care of himself. It was just that sometimes she wished he would take a week off from being a genius and go to the Bahamas to work on his tan. Despite all his obvious idiosyncrasies, Goren was far more fun than anybody she had ever met. She adored solving crimes, and with him there was a wholesome satisfaction of a job well done and the knowledge that there was not another pair of detectives in New York City that could have done better. Additionally she could derive a secret giggle from past exploits where she hung off his arm, his 'garrulous wife' searching for gossip innocently about so and so, or berating him with a playful slap on the forearm as she didn't approve in his choice of claret. Their victims always fell for it. They fit perfectly and Alex knew it. She saw no shame in admitting their success, after all they deserved it. When a suspect's front door swung back and revealed them, identification on display, she could see courage disintegrating in their eyes. Goren would fumble his way into their home, fix them with a piercing stare and pluck the relevant key out of the air. That was what she called it in her own mind 'the key', the open-sesame that uncovered a truth carefully hidden away and concealed by the person. It usually resulted in submission. Perhaps not the surrender that ended a case but crucially important nonetheless.  
  
Like drawing a breath they moulded smoothly to each other. Close enough to seem as though they read each others thoughts, when, in fact, they simply followed the evidence in the same way. They gave the illusion of inseparability, of closeness, and perhaps that illusion was fact in the sense that they were close, just not in the way it seemed. Bobby moved around Alex on his own path, in his own orbit.  
  
When he stood in front of a board mapping the intricate web of a crime and the innumerable clues that only he could see. When he explained something, wringing his hands or waving them about animatedly, incapable of forming the words quickly enough to verbalize his thoughts. When he kneaded his creased forehead with a knuckle, trying to follow the instinct that something, some definite theory was lingering on the brink. When he stared into space and frowned, his eyes directed downwards to the floor deep in thought. All she could do was wait, and wait she did. He was her partner.  
  
They didn't require anybody else. Alex often watched other partners separate to bounce ideas off their water cooler buddies, it was inconceivable that she would require a game of mental tennis with anybody other than Goren. He fulfilled all her needs in the work colleague department and well, to tell the truth, having her name next to his on the front of a daily newspaper proclaiming a success for the department helped every facet of her life. To brush all that aside and simply look at them as two people, she was fond of him, fiercely so, especially when he came under attack from any self-proclaimed experts, those intolerant fools who couldn't abide his methods. This was why she, without a single thought to the contrary, left her home as though it was the most natural thing in the world.  
  
Pulling up outside the apartment block, she realized that the police had only just arrived as the officers were unbuckling their seatbelts. A loud crash drew the attention of all five members of law enforcement at the front of the building. That loud crash was caused by, or rather, involved the one member of law enforcement at the back of the building.  
  
Alex made a mental note – she needed to buy milk on the way back.  
  
Bobby made a mental note – getting hurled though a window was not fun.  
  
When Alex found Bobby groaning and plucking shards of glass from his person she cancelled mental note number one. She was not going home tonight. He was only half-conscious but seemed to know exactly where he was and what had happened and, more importantly from her point of view, he knew her and could tell she was royally pissed off. From that last observation on his part, he deduced an apology and query was probably a good starting point.  
  
'Sorry 'bout this. What are you doing here?'  
  
'Sorry 'bout this?', she looked up and spotted the culprit, and the now empty window frame around the culprit. He was a nasty piece of work, obviously, but you couldn't tell from looking at him. He was dressed as the caretaker in navy overalls and swinging his mop about with a nefarious grin.  
  
Bobby growled and then passed out, his head resting in Alex's arms, for a few moments. Coming to again he grimaced and dragged himself onto his feet, one arm wrapped around her shoulders. A series of rounds were fired close by. Alex started, the other officers ducked, Bobby laughed. She tugged on his sleeve.  
  
'What is that?'  
  
'I locked four guys in a boiler room.'  
  
'Excuse me, wouldn't they have gotten out by now?'  
  
'I pushed a drinks machine in front of the door.'  
  
'Oh.'  
  
The caretaker pulled out a gun and started shooting.  
  
In another of those Goren-Eames moments they inhaled in unison and threw themselves sideways behind a low concrete wall that fringed the footpath around the building.  
  
'Bobby it would appear that...'  
  
'The guys have gotten themselves out of the room?'  
  
'Yes. What started this?'  
  
'There was a massive fight, about ten junkies throwing broken bottles at each other and I got asked by a resident to do something.'  
  
'So you what?'  
  
'I frightened five away with my...badge and gun and some inventive lying,' he waved the thought away dismissively, 'The other group are high so I managed to fool four into walking into the aforementioned boiler room and all I had to do was turn the key. I uh,' he paused, 'didn't realize that the new caretaker was a drug-dealer.'  
  
'Don't they get screened?'  
  
'Uh...he has never been convicted.'  
  
Alex moaned. She was lying on her side in Goren's arms watching him bleed.  
  
'So Bobby what do you propose we do?' she looked around, indicating the arrival of an extra three police cars and an ambulance, 'as it seems that your apartment building has been taken hostage by a caretaker and four of his associates.'  
  
'Sneak in the side entrance and pick them off one by one.'  
  
'Try again...'  
  
'Okay, get to the hospital and let the other guys sort it out?'  
  
'Ahh, that's the quick decisive logic I've heard so much about.'  
  
'Mmmmph.'  
  
'What does that mean?'  
  
In response, he struggled onto his knees and indicated for her to follow him.  
  
'Getting out of here. Nice,' Alex crawled away from the escalating fire fight.  
  
'So Eames.'  
  
'Yup?'  
  
'Chinese food.'  
  
'After this, definitely. As long as I get to mock you about being an ex- army New York detective who got thrown through a window by a caretaker.'  
  
He smiled bashfully. A smile only Alex knew. It was a rare occurrence blessed upon her. Her own unseen smile faded as it became clear to her that food was going to be secondary to visiting the paramedics waiting up front in the perfunctory ambulance. As Bobby sat and had his wounds checked he watched the one person he never tried to second-guess staring off into the distance, 'Penny for your thoughts?' 


End file.
